Building Teams and Managing Conflict

4 December 2025 | 9:30am-12:30pm AEST

Very few people enjoy conflict. It’s just not very pleasant. But it is inevitable. You can’t put a group of people together and expect them to agree on everything–ideas, values, priorities, personality styles, communication, ….

If you don’t believe you have conflict in your workplace, either:

• You and your people have become so good at dealing with differences that it doesn’t feel like conflict
• Everyone works so hard to avoid conflict that they are suppressing issues. Tension!

When leaders don’t embrace conflict:

• People say everything is fine but there is negativity everywhere
• They talk about each other (behind their backs) but never to each other
• Problems don’t get properly solved, just hidden away
• There are so many petty issues it sometimes feels like a schoolyard
• When issues are finally discussed, it is AN EVENT. It becomes personal and unpleasant and still isn’t resolved
• Bickering gets in the way of doing the job
• The workplace culture feels toxic even though on the surface everything seems fine
• There is so much tension!
• Every petty issue is escalated for you to deal with, instead of people behaving like adults and working things out for themselves